Ukraine Updates

Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, we'll get an update on how the war is going in Ukraine. We're doing this because the plight of the people there since the Russian invasion, which used to be very prominent in news coverage, has taken a far back seat since October 7th with the intensity of what's been happening in Israel and Gaza. Vladimir Putin is probably taking full advantage of that distraction. Even the trip to DC by President Zelensky this week, did you even know there was one? It hardly moved the need of press coverage, where as his last visit was such a big thing with his heroes welcome that didn't happen this week.

Now, it doesn't even look like Congress will pass its latest Ukraine military aid bill before adjourning for Christmas break. Let's see what's actually happening on the ground and how the events in Congress and in the Middle East might be affecting it. With us now is New York Times Ukraine correspondent Thomas Gibbons-Neff, who as some of you may know from his previous appearances here and elsewhere, was a US Marine who served in the Afghanistan war and has previously covered that war before being stationed now for The Times in Ukraine. Thomas, we always appreciate your perspective and your time when you come on with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Thomas: Thanks Brian, and good morning.

Brian: The headline of your latest article is US and Ukraine Search for a New Strategy After Failed Counteroffensive. What's this failed counter-offensive?

Thomas: Right. To bring you up to speed, there was a major attack by Ukraine's forces that began in June and petered out over the summer. It was this very sought-after. It was politically sought after by the US government and Western allies. Ukraine wanted to show that it could continue to gain ground and therefore more international support by via vis-a-vis battlefield progress. The idea was Ukrainian forces would push south severing the communication and supply lines between Western Russia and Russian occupied Crimea.

Brian: The article also says, "The Russian military had its own failed drive to Kyiv in 2022, and now has begun to reverse its fortune." Can you give us some details on that? What was that fail drive and how is Russia doing better in the war than last year?

Thomas: At the beginning of the war, February 2022, Russia's military campaign its invasion of Ukraine was a mismanaged mess where they overextended their forces and under the guide that they could take Kyiv, Ukrainian's capital relatively quickly. That obviously failed. They overextended themselves. The Ukrainians fought back viciously and over the course of 2022, outside of pushing the Russians from Kyiv, had two successful offensives, one in the Northeast and the Kyiv region, and one in the South and the Kherson region where they regained pretty key areas.

That brought us into 2023 this year with the hopes of this counter-offensive. Of course, in any kind of conflict, those on the defense have the advantage, because they're entrenches and they can defend themselves easier than a group attacking across, especially in Southern Ukraine flat terrain and open fields. The Russians had done a good job preparing for this counteroffensive as the Ukrainian forces trained to launch it. They laid mine fields, they put in more trenches, having learned from their defeats in 2022, and then applied those tactics accordingly.

Brian: Listeners, we can take some phone calls for New York Times Ukraine correspondent Thomas Gibbons-Neff about how the war is going, the war in the Middle East, or the negotiations for Ukraine aid in Congress might be affecting the actual war effort or anything related for Thomas Gibbons-Neff from The New York Times, 212-433-WNYC, but specifically about how the actual war is actually going in Ukraine, 212-433-9692. You can call or you can text. Anybody listening in Ukraine right now can call in with a personal story.

Anybody with any connection to anybody involved in the war or just anybody with a question or comment. 212-433-9692. Your latest article also says, "Moscow now has more troops, ammunition, and missiles, and has increased its firepower advantage with a fleet of battlefield drones, many of them supplied by Iran according to American officials." Does Iran feel it has a stake in what happens in Ukraine or is that just armed sales for a profit, if you know?

Thomas: I think that's a good question. I think the alliance or the cooperation between Russia and Iran is mutually beneficial, as far as Iran wanting better-grade weaponry and Russia using Iranian technology to supplement its assets on the battlefield. I think it's worth saying as far as the state of the war, the Ukrainian counter-offensive has for all intents and purposes failed to take the ground that it had aimed to take this year. Now, the war is taking a different tone as it goes into the winter. Again, both sides are taking thousands of casualties, civilians caught in the middle, as they always are paying the price.

Brian: How does the winter affect the war? Do things just slow down generally or does the winter weather advantage one side or another?

Thomas: It just means different parts of the battlefield might be places where you can fight in the winter better than you could in the summer with foliage that provides camouflage for certain pieces of military equipment like artillery. Traditionally, winter fighting is much slower just because it takes much more effort to pull anything off tactically on the battlefield. You need logistics to supply troops, fuel for vehicles, troops need to be fed, heated, given warm clothes, everything slows down. As we've seen in the past, it doesn't mean that the fighting stops completely. There continues to be pretty violent fighting throughout.

Brian: You mentioned the large number of casualties on each side. I'll ask you for a number to the extent that it's knowable in a minute. I want to put another number out there that I saw in the news just this morning. Vladimir Putin held an end-of-year news conference today in Moscow. One of the things I saw reported from that was that he cited 617,000 Russian troops currently fighting in Ukraine. Does that number over 600,000 troops surprise you or sound about right?

Thomas: Yes. I think as far as troop dispositions, whether it's the amount of troops in one place, the amount of casualties, those numbers are extremely hard to verify and always misleading, especially when it comes out of the mouths of officials, whether from the Ukrainian government or the Russian government. What it does tell me is that there is a large amount of combatants on the ground in Ukraine, which is something that we've known for a while, obviously.

Brian: Yes, and that sounds like a tremendous number of troops. Do you know, for example, what the most US troops at any one time was in Afghanistan where you fought, or Iraq or even Vietnam back in the day?

Thomas: I think I can speak most accurately to Afghanistan, and that was in 2010, 2011, it was over 100,000. I'm not sure if I'm counting NATO troops and allied forces as well, but yes, well over 100,000. I think that's one of the things [crosstalk]

Brian: Over 100,000, we're talking here over 600,000 if Vladimir Putin is telling anything like the truth.

Thomas: I think we knew for certain initial contingent of Russian forces that went into Ukraine was well over 200,000, but I could be off there.

Brian: Related to that, Russia's population is so much bigger than Ukraine's. Can Russia just overwhelm Ukraine in this war eventually because Ukraine will just literally run out of fighters first as both sides suffer casualties in the war?

Thomas: I think that's a number Putin put into stories and news coverage that Russia's population is roughly three times the size. When you think about how the war's being fought, it really is mass on mass as far as the amount of troops, the amount of ammunition, artillery ammunition, missiles, everything comes down to these numbers and you expect to hear of a breakthrough here or breakthrough there, but when in reality it's just these two forces slamming up against each other and talking to troops on the front line.

They've heard there's cases of Russian strategy of basically just waiting for the Ukrainians to run out of ammo before walking into a trench to take it. I think that's a pretty good way and brutal way to look at the war.

Brian: Sheldon in Forest Hills is calling in about that three-to-one population advantage for Russia. Sheldon, you're WNYC with Thomas Gibbons-Neff, who by the way, is back in the States right now, but is generally covering Ukraine for The New York Times. Hi, Sheldon.

Sheldon: Hi. There's been so much adverse criticism about the success or failure of Ukrainian forces, but the whole paradigm is twisted because what they've accomplished, as you said is a country third of size in population versus Russia, I think is really stupendous. Now, granted, they've gotten a lot of support from the US and from NATO, but notwithstanding all out the fighting really comes down on the backs of these very brave Ukrainians. I think they've done a tremendous job. They've made a lot of mistakes but so has Russia.

One of the advantages that Russia has is that they've got size of the population, they've also got this much greater industrial base, and one of the world's leading producer and exporter of oil, so that gives them an unlimited, almost unlimited amount of money in this kind of battle. There's no question that they've got an advantage, but the Ukrainians should not be written off easily--

Brian: Yes, because they've overachieved so far.

Sheldon: They've got a chance.

Brian: Thank you, Sheldon. I've read to that point that Ukraine has had to rely increasingly on older soldiers as they run out of available younger men, and relative to Russia. Is that what you know to be true? Is that something you know to be true?

Thomas: Yes, and addressing Sheldon's point, I think the paradigm can be a little skewed because I think of the political pressure on the Ukrainians to succeed when in reality, it is a very tough fight. I think, me sitting here talking clinically about failed counter-offensives and mass on mass and tactics and strategy, at the end of the day, it is extremely violent. It is hard to comprehend what that fighting looks like at a granular level and having experienced some of it as an embedded reporter.

I can safely say as compared to my time-fighting in Afghanistan, it makes it very much look like a vacation comparative to the level of violence, granted in Afghanistan on foot patrols, you have different threats and different ways to die, but as far as the sustained intensity of the violence that these regular troops are facing is extraordinary.

Brian: Is that urban warfare in various cities? We're hearing so much these days about Gaza and the urban warfare and the house-to-house and the bombing of apartment buildings because Hamas fighters are believed to be embedded there, things like that. Is it that kind of thing in the cities of Ukraine?

Thomas: Yes. Talking about Israel and Gaza, that's in a separate compartment, but as far as Ukraine is concerned, it's a lot of artillery. It's rocket artillery howitzers. The air forces are secondary and tertiary because of how contested the airspace is, as in Russian and Ukrainian jets can't really fly over the battlefield because they'll be shot down by surfaced air missiles. Then going back to your question about conscription and the older age of Ukrainian soldiers, this comes down to conscription laws where the age of conscription has been recently, I think earlier this year, brought down from 27 to 25.

But again that means, there's a lot more older recruits that are filling the ranks and conscription methods and how Ukraine fills the ranks is a totally different story than we have a story on that coming out here in the next couple of days.

Brian: By the way, do women fight in either the Ukrainian or the Russian armies?

Thomas: Yes, absolutely. I've attended sniper school courses in the Ukrainian military, and there have been women in the classrooms and there's many women medics who are out there on the front lines and soldiers as well, but again, as far as proportionally, it's obviously much less,

Brian: You mentioned the challenges for air power, and I think Brendan in Manhattan has a call about that. Brendan, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Brendan: Hi. It seems to me that-- I'm not a military person, but that you can't win a war today without combined arms. We have forced Ukraine into fighting World War I trench warfare with artillery again, and I realized that nobody had the guts to give the Ukrainians F-16s from the get-go, but we should have been training their pilots from the get-go so that when we finally got up the guts to give them access to the planes, they'd be ready to go.

If they had F-16s, and I understand the guest's point of view as far as air defenses, but that's what F-16s are for, it's to dominate a battlefield to get the Ukrainians on the move against the Russians. I think that our failure to train those pilots in advance has really, really hurt them.

Brian: Brendan, thank you, Thomas. Do you think he's onto something?

Thomas: The F-16 argument, to me, has always been a bit of a red herring. If you look at the Ukrainian Air Force's psychs compared to the Russians, and again, both air forces are participating in this war and are dwarfed because of, again, it's contested airspace surfaced air missiles that doesn't-- that Russian Air Force is much bigger than Ukrainians, but they're kind of still stuck in a similar role where they have to participate in combat far from the front lines to reserve the aircraft and their pilots.

If the US sent 20 F-16s, those F-16s would have to perform, much like the Ukrainian migs are performing right now, far behind the front lines. They might be able to launch missiles or target maybe Russian aircraft at a distance, but it still wouldn't be I think as we, the United States envisioned it, or as a bystander envisions it as the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan where you have jets flying close air support because it's just not that kind of environment.

In the interim, Ukraine and Russia has adapted their air forces to fight in this secondary role the Russians have developed in these glide bombs where they can drop, a somewhat guided bomb from far away, so it can hit the front line, but preserve the Russian aircraft. Ukrainians, they fly in and fly out at very low altitudes to preserve, again, the aircraft and the pilot while also trying to help out on the battlefield, but it's nothing compared to the amount of artillery that's firing and then how important that is.

Brian: Well, the caller was talking about the US training those pilots. Your article does say the United States is stepping up the face-to-face military advice, it provides to Ukraine, dispatching a three-star general to Kyiv to spend considerable time on the ground. It says US and Ukrainian military officers say they hope to work out the details of a new strategy next month in a series of war games scheduled to be held in V spot in Germany. Does the US have military expertise that Ukraine does not, that is generally indispensable to that war effort?

Thomas: That's the ultimate question. As a former guy who fought in Afghanistan, obviously, I'm a little jaded when I think how the United States approaches its coordination and cooperation with partner forces jaded of course by the Afghan military. I don't think the United States--

Brian: We lost that war. Oh, by the way, right?

Thomas: Yes. We have to say it again, but yes, that did happen. I don't know if the United States has the secret sauce as to how the Ukrainians can win. I just think that what war Ukraine is fighting right now with the amount of drones over the battlefield with contested airspace, the amount of artillery, it's something that the United States has never fought. For the US to come in and think it has, how to zig and zag when it's really, the Ukrainians should be teaching us or teaching the United States how to fight this kind of conflict. That's the ultimate question. I guess it's a weird puzzle.

Brian: This idea of working out a new strategy, do you know what kinds of new strategies they're considering?

Thomas: I think, again, the story that we've been talking about, it was written by a bunch. I was-- I think the last person on it, a bunch of my very qualified Washington DC Pentagon, White House, State Department colleagues who talk to US officials far more than I do and I think the strategies discussed are the United States is pushing for more of a defensive approach into the coming year, and the Ukrainians want to continue to push the fight in whatever way they can, whether that's long-range strikes or another counter-offensive.

I'm sure these war games going forward, these conversations will be a lot of that back and forth, but that's really all I know.

Brian: Let me get one more call in here. Mike in Manhattan says he was personally involved around the beginning of the war. Mike, you're on WNYC.

Mike: Hi. When the war first started, I went over to Poland and I was on the Polish-Ukraine border helping refugees. I feel really personally involved with this and I've been following it closely, but I have this friend of mine who we always go back and forth and he says two things. One, that the Western media is completely misrepresenting what's going on over there, and it's much worse for the Ukrainians than we would like it to be because he believes that there's this agenda on the West to use Ukraine as a tool against Russia.

He basically makes the argument that Ukrainians are dying unnecessarily because it's a proxy war with the US and NATO and all this kind of stuff. Then he also said that after Putin faltered in the beginning, there was a period where he was willing to sign some peace deal or claim some of the territory and end the war. Again, the US and NATO encouraged Ukraine to keep fighting. Have you heard anything about--? Because I don't remember ever hearing that kind of thing that there was a peace deal that was possible.

So those two things. Was there a possible peace deal that the US sabotaged and NATO sabotaged? Also, are we really getting a false sense of how bad things are for the Ukrainians at this point?

Brian: Yes, and the implied question there too is the US pulling Zelensky strings when Zelensky might've wanted to make some compromise land for peace deal. I don't know that there's any evidence of that, but you tell us, Thomas, can you tell from your reporting, or is that more on the diplomatic side, and that would be a different journalist?

Thomas: Yes. I think as my understanding, there were definitely peace negotiations at the beginning of the war that never really panned out but these kind of talking points have been perpetuated before. Make no mistake. Russia is the aggressor here. They invaded Ukraine. That happened. Whether the West participation in the United States' participation, they have their own reasons for trying to push back against the Russian military for a myriad of geopolitical reasons but at the end of the day, Russia's the aggressor, Ukraine is defending itself.

Brian: Before you go, two things. I said I was going to ask you about casualties. Is it possible to say how many Ukrainians and how many Russians have died in this war?

Thomas: There's nothing. Again, it's a lot of Western officials, again both Ukraine and Russia closely guard their casualty numbers for obvious reasons. I think the last story that The New York Times wrote that we wrote was 150,000 Ukrainian casualties and over 300,000 Russian casualties but those, again, a lot of times, it's how-

Brian: Guesswork.

Thomas: -confident are these intelligent services? They're most of the time pretty low.

Brian: Just when you use the word, pretty low, meaning it's probably more than that.

Thomas: I mean the confidence of their assessments is low so it could be-- yes, it's probably more.

Brian: Does casualties include deaths and injuries?

Thomas: Yes, wounded and dead.

Brian: Last thing, how has the war in Israel affected the war in Ukraine in any way that's concrete if there's any?

Thomas: I think the fear in Ukraine is always that the attention on the Ukrainian or the Russian invasion of Ukraine will wane and that will directly reflect in the amount of aid given to Ukraine's formations, Ukraine's military.

Brian: And on they go. Actually, I guess we could conclude by saying the end of this war, one way or the other, is not close.

Thomas: It doesn't look like it but again it's always tough to tell.

Brian: Thomas Gibbons-Neff, former US Marine who fought in Afghanistan and now an experienced journalist covering Ukraine now for The New York Times. Thank you very much.

Thomas: Thanks for having me.

Brian: Brian Lehrer in WNYC, more in a minute.

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.